Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina – Smart Prevention

Phenomenon – Belina

Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 13:06:46 +0000

Criminology / Phenomenon / Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina

Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina

The digitalization phenomenon

Belina: Threat

Belina: Chances

Belina: Vision

Transcript

What is new about digitalization, what is new about smart cities, smart homes, smart policing, smart everything? What is new is not that data is worked with and algorithms are used. Algorithms, after all, are initially just structured techniques for evaluating data. What is new, however, is that there are capacities to jointly evaluate huge amounts of data, even very different data. What is new, however, is that these predictions are now largely made by machines, and less and less by humans and less and less well controlled. What is also new are not the dangers involved. Every prevention goes hand in hand with the dangers of discrimination, injustice, general suspicion. What is new, however, is that these dangers are being magnified and legitimised by the fact that machines now make the predictions. What concrete dangers can one imagine? A few examples of the concrete dangers: For example, smart homes can be misused by ex-partners for stalking, for example by turning on the alarm system at night, a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly common, i.e. misuse of the technologies. In the USA, predictive policing has been proven to regularly lead to people of darker skin colour being suspected, far more than proportionately. A problem of the algorithms themselves, for example, on programs used in migration control, where the last name is used to identify where someone comes from, and where there are large built-in sources of error, in the way machines make predictions.

Author

Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina

Bernd Belina teaches and researches since April 2008 at the Institut für Humangeographie [Institute of Human Geography]
He received his doctorate from the Institut für Geographie der Universität Bremen [Institute of Geography at the University of Bremen] and subsequently worked at the Institut für Geographie der Universität Potsdam [Institute of Geography at the University of Potsdam] and the Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde [Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography] in Leipzig.
His main research interests are historical-geographic materialism, urban geography, political geography and critical criminology

Our Experts

Professor Dr. Thomas Goergen

Thomas-Gabriel Rüdiger

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Der Beitrag Phenomenon – Belina erschien zuerst auf Smart Prevention.

Threat – Belina

Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 13:05:02 +0000

Criminology / Threat / Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina

Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina

New prevention tasks

Belina: Phenomenon

Belina: Chances

Belina: Vision

Transkript

The dangers of smart technologies reinforce the dangers inherent in any form of prevention. Prevention is always problematic or quickly becomes problematic when it is directed at individuals, groups or entire rooms, cities, districts. Prevention that focuses on concrete actions and situations is far better protected against these dangers. Why? Prevention that wants to identify who will be dangerous in the future or where it could be dangerous, must always try to look into the future on the basis of certain characteristics. Smart technologies simplify this, but they also make it more dangerous in the sense that they produce a lot of “false positives”, a lot of what you would call statistically false alarms. Through a certain combination of technologies and presumptions that go into technologies, groups of people and spaces are identified that are supposed to be dangerous, and then everyone who falls into this category is suddenly potentially dangerous. And this poses great problems for the rule of law, for freedom from discrimination and also for informational self-determination. In this respect, smart technologies reinforce the problems that are inherent in all types of prevention and that everyone involved in prevention is aware of.

Autor

Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina

Bernd Belina teaches and researches since April 2008 at the Institute of Human Geography
He received his doctorate from the Institute of Geography at the University of Bremen and subsequently worked at the Institute of Geography at the University of Potsdam and the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig.
His main research interests are historical-geographic materialism, urban geography, political geography and critical criminology

Weiterführende Links

Phenomenon

Threat

Chances

Vision

Our Experts

Professor Dr. Thomas Goergen

Thomas-Gabriel Rüdiger

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Der Beitrag Threat – Belina erschien zuerst auf Smart Prevention.

Chances – Belina

Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 13:04:34 +0000

Criminology / Chances / Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina

Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina

Chances

Belina: Phenomenon

Belina: Threat

Belina: Vision

Transcript

The best crime prevention is and remains a good social policy and this includes aspects of economic policy, education policy, urban policy etc. And in these areas, smart solutions can be very supportive. Smart solutions, i.e. on the basis of big data analyses, on the basis of evaluations of large amounts of data, can help to get a better grip on where which social policy, where which educational interventions might be useful. The new technologies can be helpful in this respect. However, they are not the solution, they are only a means of getting closer to the end of the solutions. A good example of this seems to me to be the radicalisation of the right. It can make a lot of sense to identify spaces on the basis of data sets, even different data, both digital spaces and real spaces in which inhuman statements are made, in which they become sayable, in which they are normalised and possibly also become hegemonic. How can such spaces be identified? By connecting large amounts of data of digital spaces as well as real spaces with each other, and by looking at where the election successes of right-wing parties that represent inhuman positions are concentrated. And where are activities like right wing rock concerts, right wing shops, other right wing infrastructures concentrated? Where is the concentration of violence against those who look differently? Where is the concentration of anti-Semitic violence? Where are the attempts to organise right-wing groups concentrated? With the help of smart technologies, it is possible to get a better grip on these issues and then to see where and in relation to which groups of people and in which spheres interventions of a socio-pedagogical and economic nature make sense. Smart technologies can certainly provide support for this. There is a wide range of surveillance technologies and it always depends very much on what kind of technology is used to solve which problem. There was, for example, the very smart idea of an advisory committee for President Obama in the USA to use predictive policing software in such a way that police officers with an affinity for violence are better identified. This is an attempt to be creative with technology and use it to make policing more democratic, more legitimate, more non-violent. Apart from that, there is a large market for surveillance technologies which is largely driven by the suppliers. There is of course a danger in this, because only what is technically possible can be sold, regardless of the problems it may solve. The task of finding out which means and which technology can actually help to solve which problems is something that we must do and we must not leave it to the companies.

Author

Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina

Bernd Belina teaches and researches since April 2008 at the Institut für Humangeographie [Institute of Human Geography]
He received his doctorate from the Institut für Geographie der Universität Bremen [Institute of Geography at the University of Bremen] and subsequently worked at the Institut für Geographie der Universität Potsdam [Institute of Geography at the University of Potsdam] and the Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde [Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography] in Leipzig.
His main research interests are historical-geographic materialism, urban geography, political geography and critical criminology

Our Experts

Professor Dr. Thomas Goergen

Thomas-Gabriel Rüdiger

Comments

Der Beitrag Chances – Belina erschien zuerst auf Smart Prevention.

Vision – Belina

Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 13:03:02 +0000

Criminology / Vision / Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina

Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina

Vision: Smart Prevention

Belina: Phenomenon

Belina: Threat

Belina: Chances

Transcript

For the future, what is needed above all is more education, more information about what smart technologies are and what they can do. This starts with what data goes into smart technologies that are used in the prevention sector. This is often the police crime statistics. The long debate about what police crime statistics are and can do must be taken seriously here too. There must be a knowledge of what algorithms are, how statistics work and what kind of connections are made among all those involved in the implementation of smart prevention programmes. Keywords would be Statistical Literacy, Algorithmic Literacy, Computational Literacy. And it needs knowledge about the fact that and why and also with which consequences false positives are produced again and again by these new prognosis technologies. What are false positives? False positives are not the hits where a prediction is true, but rather the hits where a prediction is made, where groups of people or rooms become the object of prevention, but it turns out that it was wrong. A very large number of these are always produced, and this goes hand in hand with the production of whole populations, that are often, regularly, constantly wrongly suspected, which of course does something to these people: it alienates them, exposes them to a feeling of being unable to act. The other thing needed is clear guidelines and directives. Guidelines on how to handle such technologies. They must be transparent and democratically verifiable, they must work openly with open data, they must not get into the hands of large corporations. In particular, sensitive data must never leave the computers of public institutions involved in prevention. Clear rules must be drawn up that can prevent abuse and also implement the rules that apply beyond the digital realm. For example, the prohibition on sharing police and secret service work, for example a sensitive way of handling data as a whole.

Author

Prof. Dr. Bernd Belina

Bernd Belina teaches and researches since April 2008 at the Institute of Human Geography
He received his doctorate from the Institute of Geography at the University of Bremen and subsequently worked at the Institute of Geography at the University of Potsdam and the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig.
His main research interests are historical-geographic materialism, urban geography, political geography and critical criminology

Our Experts

Professor Dr. Thomas Goergen

Thomas-Gabriel Rüdiger

Comments

Der Beitrag Vision – Belina erschien zuerst auf Smart Prevention.